The Smart Set: On Animal Intelligence
inference-review.com
inference-review.com
Say (hah) what you like about different cultures, we appear to be able to perform remarkably consistent reasoned, abstract interchanges with people we can't actually speak to, purely with stick-figure diagrams and hand-miming. Including communicating the idea "thats a lion, this is a parrot" to somebody who might not have actually seen either but has seen the lion king as a video, and watches youtube.
I totally get that animals are now understood to have introspection, abstraction, abnegation, pride, lust, envy, altruism, you name it, we can show in crude form how animals have it. But, in the end, we completely fail and explaining why a subscription to the new york times is better than only reading four free articles a month. No grey parrot, dolphin or very smart dog appears able to grasp what we're saying.
I love animals, and I feel empathetically connected with animals and as a meat-eater, I have some qualms about my a-moral stance eating obviously highly intelligent animals like pigs. But, and it is a crucial but, there is a really narrow band of communication they seem willing to engage with me in, which appears focussed on very direct basic drives of food and reward. they aren't really into higher abstract reasoning that centers on communication. Maybe they have a rich interior dialogue of abstact thought? Could we know? is an fMRI able to say that its not just dreaming, its having intelligent dreams?
I think they don't actually want to display intelligence to me. I think. I probably believe they can't but I really doubt they even want to. Maybe they're smarter than they look?
Yeah, there have been lots of guesses as to why humans are smart, haven't there, e.g. bipedalism, opposing thumbs, tool use, large brain, descended larynx.
But the best guess so far IMO is that humans are optimised for meme transmission. For example, we can tell which way our mother is looking. This leads straightforwardly to language (words being memes which can be pronounced, as Daniel Dennett points out), and thence to culture. Which makes us super-smart. Animals don't seem to have reached cultural escape velocity yet.
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-we-show-the-whit...
But the facts seem to be simple and clear: animals are highly intelligent and closely related to us. They are our brothers and sisters.
I am not saying, "go vegan". I think our priority should first be improving how we treat other humans. There is a lot of opportunity for improvement there before we direct our energies to other animals.
So true. When someone says that there are no answers, there's usually an obvious answer which makes the speaker's continuing lifestyle untenable or their professed values hypocritical.
Closely related to "no one could see it coming" when people saw it coming.
So, while I agree that there's a reoccurring pattern in human operation that will resolve cognitive dissonance in a self-serving kind of way, I'm not sure we can resolve this issue in particular so easily, without some very high-level assumptions. As far as I'm concerned, the question of "what is intelligence" is up there with the deepest mysteries out there.
This doesn't mean it's okay to treat animals badly, and there are still good and moral justifications for veg*ism even if you accept that humans and animals are separate, but I think it's important to resist the temptation to ascribe human qualities to animals. We really are separate.
> But, and it is a crucial but, there is a really narrow band of communication they seem willing to engage with me in, which appears focussed on very direct basic drives of food and reward. they aren't really into higher abstract reasoning that centers on communication. Maybe they have a rich interior dialogue of abstract thought?
you should have a look at orcas and their high levels of communication. not only do they have dialects and culture, such as learning and teaching new hunting techniques, they have detailed communication methods. for example, they have a special hunting technique in which during a hunt not going well, they start vocalizing again and leave the area. this signals to their prey that they have given up and are on their way out. meanwhile, they have selected a single orca to stay behind and remain silent and still. once the prey relaxes, it's killed by the silent orca who then signals to the others. there is another case where orcas visit a specific low water area to massage themselves with smooth pebbles special to that area. there are many examples of orca communicating with humans, e.g. luna the whale and the australian orcas who used to cooperate with whalers. and their are other cases of specifying individuals and communicating timing.
orcas will often seek humans out in the wild, being curious about what's happening. i can certainly imagine it being frustrating to them that we aren't able to communicate with them other than slapping the water and making primitive sounds when we're not capturing them. in captivity, they showcase complex emotional responses to their situation, including mental illness and even suicide. there is a sense of longing to those in captivity since orcas are amongst the most social and familial animals, probably even moreso than humans.
the key limiting factor for orcas is their environment, which prevents advanced use of tools and mediums of communication.
> I think they don't actually want to display intelligence to me. I think. I probably believe they can't but I really doubt they even want to. Maybe they're smarter than they look?
i think this is likely the case for some animals, including the above mentioned orcas. we don't really understand their intelligence, so i don't feel its right to assume it's a lesser one. in all cases of studies of orcas, they surprise people with their intelligence and communication. us humans really have no idea how to understand or study intelligence and communication though, so we shouldn't make judgements based off this inability.